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About a week ago I got a phone call about a problem on one of my bridges that was under construction. I took down the information and sent an e-mail to the consultant who designed the bridge asking them to analyze it and come up with a solution, keeping track of their labor so we could assess the contractor for the time they spent on the problem. I never heard anything back, so I asked again yesterday morning (thinking I should just call, but e-mail is just so easy, plus I copied his boss and the DOT project manager). The DOT guy was mad that a week had gone by with no answer, so he replied to even more people and said he wanted an answer right away. Still nothing. I called the consultant that afternoon and asked if he had gotten my e-mail. “What e-mail?” he said. I had problems in the past with their company blocking my e-mail so I asked him if he had a personal e-mail address I could send it to. He still didn’t get it. I told him I would just print it out and fax it to him.

After I faxed it, I went over the e-mail to see if I could find anything that might have flagged the mail as spam (one time I used the word “free” in a subject line and it was blocked). In the very last sentence I found the problem: I had left the “s” off of “assess”. An automatic courtesy censor had prevented my e-mails from ever leaving the building.

I’ve been taking MARTA to and from work forever. And for maybe all of that time MARTA has run two-car trains that go from Bankhead Station on a short spur northwest of downtown to King Memorial just east of my destination station, Georgia State. Sometimes the trains run two stations further, going to Candler Park station. I would never take those short trains though since I would just have to get off later and wait.

But a month or so ago, there was an electrical fire or something that caused MARTA to shut down at the Inman Park station. A woman at work was on her way home in her car and called us to say she had seen hundreds of people outside the Georgia State MARTA station and be aware there were problems. We have a window that looks out towards the MARTA tracks and it didn’t appear there were any trains running. Eventually I was able to snag a ride with someone so that I didn’t have to get stuck at MARTA or wait forever for a bus bridge like last year. On the way we saw all of these people walking home. It was like something out of a movie (or a New York blackout). It would probably take me over an hour, but I could walk home if I really had to. By the time we left work, our car was full of other stranded MARTA riders.

Anyway, after that I started thinking that even if the train only went a few stations towards home, that if there was a problem, at least I would be that much closer to home and have to walk less. So if the train goes to Candler Park, now I go ahead and get on it. This has turned out to be pretty good. The short trains seem more likely to be refurbished and have fewer people on them. And one nice advantage is the Candler Park station is right next to the Edwards Pie Company bakery. So if the wind is blowing right and the factory is operating, the whole station smells like pie.

Today I cancelled my Netflix membership after 4 months. In that time I saw 45 movies, so the average was 11 movies per month under the 2 movie at a time plan. That’s a lot of movies to watch and I also wrote reviews of the recent ones on my website. This is about the same as I was able to watch the first time around when I could get three movies at a time.

Movies that I really enjoyed included Wedding Crashers, Enron: The Smartest Guys in the Room, Curse of the Were-Rabbit, Munich, Proof, The Last Samurai, Koyaanisqatsi, Garden State, Creature Comforts, Mystic River, Spellbound, United 93, Suicide Kings, and Riding Giants. So that’s 14 really good movies.

Disappointments included Fog of War, Kill Bill Vols 1 and 2, Hotel Rwanda, Better Off Dead, Beyond the Sea, 24 Season 1, History of the World – Part 1, Secondhand Lions, Indiscreet, and Tombstone. Even so, I am glad I saw most of those.

Continue reading “Netflix Recap”

I didn’t do as well as last quarter with Amazon, but still was able to earn $168.41 on sales of 148 items worth $3,825.51. August was a particularly bad month for sales and, for the first time, my Google AdSense revenue exceeded the Amazon commissions (AdSense has been doing really well lately with revenue of $40-$50 a month). So traffic was strong, there just weren’t that many people buying stuff. August probably isn’t a big sales month anyway, plus Apple hadn’t released anything new in a long time. But they did introduce some new iPods in September and sales started doing better.

Continue reading “Amazon Q3 Results”

Two years ago when Dad, Jeb, Grant, and I visited Tybee we were stuck inside due to a hurricane and re-invented Bocce (botchee) where we would roll a small ball (which we called a “pith,” though I have no idea why since it isn’t called that; there is a pith ball that is used to measure static electricity in physics) and then see who could roll a larger ball closest to the pith. When it finally stopped raining, we moved this game out to the beach. That was more interesting than indoors since you had more room, terrain, and different textures of sand (hard wet sand, soft dry sand). We would go all up and down the beach throwing the pith and then trying to land balls closest to it (sometimes the pith gets knocked around, which changes everything). This year the sea gulls seemed very interested in the egg-sized white pith ball.

Continue reading “Beach Bocce”